In 2003, as war clouds gathered, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks told a hollering London crowd that she was ashamed President Bush was from Texas. This remark, first reported in this paper, became as notorious as John Lennon's "bigger than Jesus" crack. Barbara Kopple's exhilarating documentary shows how sales plummeted and Maines was hate-bombed with abuse from America's media-political establishment tensely looking for a fifth-columnist to beat up on.

Maines was pretty shaken; she apologised for the tone and the timing, but not the sentiment, and then hung tough for years while political opinion sheepishly sidled round to her way of thinking. A gold statue of the Dixie Chicks should be erected in Maines' hometown of Lubbock, Texas.